By Death Possessed

by Roger Ormerod

  ‘Hurry,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll need the torch.’

  There was no handrail to grip, just open steps. With one hand reaching upwards and forwards, I mounted to a trapdoor. It opened easily. I had to be careful to lower it gently as I hoisted it beyond the vertical. A waft of stale dust enveloped me.

  My first stab with the torch discovered a light switch on one of the upright rafter supports. The wiring was naked. I touched the switch, rather surprised when two bare bulbs went on. It was a poor light for such a large area, but it was more useful than the torch. The complete floor area was boarded, so that we were able to move around without difficulty.

  I had expected to find four tea chests standing proud in a vast emptiness. But a hundred years of family discards were scattered around, and we had to search. They were together. Four tea chests. Sealed. There were no crosses on them that I could detect.

  Quite close, lying where they’d been thrown, I found the shattered and discarded remnants of what could have been four other tea chests. The metal corner bracings identified them. On these remains I could see no crosses, either.

  But Gran hadn’t said what she’d used to mark the crosses. If it had been chalk, the dust and decay of seventy years could have eliminated all traces.

  ‘We forgot to bring something to open them with,’ said Margaret, her breathing heavy and fast.

  ‘There must be something we can use.’

  There was. It might have been the same crowbar Arthur Hine had used to break open the other chests.

  The tops came off with creaks and groans and bangs. All four were filled with canvases. Margaret’s hand was shaking when she reached inside and drew one free.

  It had dust on it, and there seemed to be some darkening of age. Or it could have been the poor lighting. I clicked on the torch and held it close to the canvas. She swept her palm over it. The signature was the same overlapped A and F as on mine, the date three years later.

  AF 1913

  ‘Well?’ I asked.

  She didn’t reply at once. Perhaps I was expecting too much of her. At last: ‘I don’t know!’ she said, pain in her voice.

  I left her to it, and got the tops off the other three. They weren’t packed tight, and old dresses that had been Gran’s had been used to restrict movement. One of them was blue. I drew out another canvas at random.

  ‘Try this one.’

  She shook her head, and merely glanced at it. ‘It can’t be!’ she said in despair, staring at the one in her hands. ‘It’s the same. The same style as yours. And yet it can’t be. Yours was rescued from the fire. This is the other lot. Tony, it’s impossible.’

  ‘We’ll have to unpack ’em, and take them down in bundles.’

  ‘Do it how you damn well please,’ she said in sudden anger. But the anger was at herself and her inability to make a decision. ‘Sorry. But, Tony, can you get them down yourself?’

  ‘I’ll need help. A full chest is too heavy. Why can’t you lend a hand?’

  But I knew why. When her head turned so that she could glance at me—and away—the torch caught her eyes. It was all in there, her growing panic and despair. With all her years of study behind her, the precious expertise she’d nursed was letting her down. She could not make a firm and confident decision. ‘You can’t do that,’ I said quietly, guessing her intention.

  ‘There’s only one person who really knows.’

  ‘Even she—’

  ‘She would know. At a glance.’ She shook my arm. ‘A minute. Is that too much to ask! Old people sleep and wake and sleep again. I’ll be gentle.’

  I turned away. ‘We’re wasting time.’

  She took it as agreement and, taking the canvas with her, dangling from her fingers, she backed away down the steps.

  I did what I could, piling them in heaps of ten beside the opening, backing down, reaching them through, and doing it with no hands for support. There were fifty standing beside the steps when she returned.

  ‘Well?’ I said, my back to her. She didn’t answer. I turned.

  Even in the poor light I could detect that she was pale. Her eyes seemed sightless, her mind not with me.

  ‘You woke her?’ I prompted.

  ‘Yes. Oh yes. They wake easily, old people.’

  ‘And what did she say?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t understand.’

  ‘Relax, Margaret. Did she get a good look at the painting?’

  ‘She seemed to.’

  ‘And?’

  She shook her head, her lips puckering.

  ‘With her glasses on?’ I prompted.

  ‘They were on the side. Yes, I gave them to her. She took one good look at it and started shouting out ...’

  ‘Perhaps she took a good look at you, too, and couldn’t remember who you are. I should’ve gone with you.’

  ‘Shouting for Grace.’

  ‘Just that?’

  She nodded, her lower lip between her teeth.

  ‘Perhaps you frightened her. Did she use your name?’

  She shook her head. ‘Only Grace’s. Shouting.’

  ‘For help, I suppose.’

  ‘She was angry.’

  I grinned at her, trying to shake her from the mood. ‘All right, so you didn’t get anywhere ... so what! I hope you didn’t leave her upset.’

  ‘I soothed her.’

  ‘Right. Then we’ll have to rely on you. Now why don’t you take some of these down to the car. I’m getting the hang of it now.’

  She spoke not one word during the rest of the transfer. There were eighty-one. I counted them as we loaded the Volvo, then went back to the landing to check that there was no visible evidence that we’d been there, put my head inside the door of Gran’s room—she was again peaceful and quiet—then put out the lights we’d used, closed the front door behind me, and joined Margaret in the car.

  She was smoking again. I said: ‘No doubt your scientific methods will reveal the truth.’

  I meant it as encouragement; she took it as sarcasm. She gave a small, bitter bark of angry laughter, and backed the car out of the drive.

  The Morris Minor was just taking the bend farther along the Grove. It was a matter of seconds. From later events, it became obvious that Grace had spotted the Volvo’s headlights swinging out of the drive, but at the time she did nothing to obstruct us. We drove past each other as though neither car existed.

  It was nearly midnight when we drove up to Margaret’s cottage. We hadn’t said much during the journey. I was busy fighting my conscience. My moral performance so far had not been commendable. I helped her into the workroom with the complete set, plus my original canvas, and we placed them in piles on her benches.

  ‘Phew!’ she said. ‘Some job here. I’ll be at it all night.’

  ‘I take it I can’t be much help?’ I said it hopefully, the hope being that she would say no.

  ‘You can make coffee, hold things, encourage.’

  I flung the lock of hair out of my eyes with one hand. ‘I’d rather hoped to get some sleep.’

  ‘Sleep!’ She stared at me with wonder. ‘Don’t you care?’

  ‘In any event, I’m the grandson of two marvellous painters.’

  ‘And that’s all? Oh, Tony, how can you be so unfeeling! It matters. They’re all yours. Either you’ve got one Frederick Ashe and eighty-one Angelina Footes, or the other way round. And it’s Frederick Ashe who’s become famous. Don’t you understand? Some of the great artists had pupils, who naturally learned to paint like their master. Sometimes they’re almost indistinguishable. But the pupils are all called “the school of so-and-so”. So your grandmother is going to be “school of Frederick Ashe”. However good she was.’

  ‘She was, wasn’t she? Good, I mean. In any event.’

  She made an impatient gesture. ‘Oh, you’re hopeless. Put it like this. That one painting of yours, if it’s a Frederick Ashe, would be a find. I bet you’d get fifty thousand pounds for it in auction. In that cas
e, the whole eighty-one Angelina Footes wouldn’t be worth more. But if the eighty-one are Ashes, then what sort of a find would that be? It’d rock the art world. You’d be—what?—worth a million and a half. Maybe more. And you say it wouldn’t matter!’

  ‘Of course it’d matter,’ I said gently. ‘I assure you I’m all agog. Couldn’t be gogger. But I’m still a professional photographer, with a contract to fulfil. I thought I would hire a car—’

  ‘You can’t just turn your back on all this.’

  ‘I shall return.’ Why had I become caught in this facetious mood? Because I couldn’t take her seriously? That was it, surely.

  ‘You don’t need to hire a car. I’ll drive you where you want to go.’

  But I needed my independence. I wanted to be free of her forceful influence. Above all, I had to get away on my own, and consider from the outside a world for which I felt no sympathy or understanding. The pragmatism was stifling me. I’d always believed the art world to be bound by love of beauty and perfection but apparently, like everything else, it was wrapped around with money.

  ‘You’ll be busy. I’ll need at least a full day at my photo lab, and you’ll need a night ... and a day?’

  Then she stood back and looked at me fondly, shaking her head.

  ‘Oh, Tony, Tony, you’re quite incredible. Go away and play with your photographs. But come back with expectations. Because, whatever happens, it’s more important than your crabby little photographic business.’

  With these parting words ringing in my head, I went to my room.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  In fact, I did hire a car, thus straining the muscle of my credit card. There was no question of Margaret driving me. By the morning she was grey with exhaustion, having cleaned most of the paintings, and I nearly had to carry her to bed. All I got out of her was the fact that she still had no proof, either way, as to the identity of the artist who’d painted the eighty-one.

  I walked into town, no more than a mile, hired a red Ford Fiesta, and headed for my own territory.

  My place had a small window on two sides of the corner where Beech Street meets Albert’s Fold. There’s a door beside it opening into a reception area with a narrow counter dividing it in half. On the counter is a notice. ‘If red light shows, please press button and wait.’ The red light is above the door the other side of the counter, and indicates that I’m working beyond it. In no event must light be allowed to enter at the wrong time. There was, that day, plenty of time during which the red light was glowing, because I had six spools of film to develop and around two hundred colour prints, six by four, to produce. The buzzer was silent until late in the afternoon.

  I was well into the swing of it, having stopped only for a sandwich and coffee at a place just down Albert’s Fold, when the buzzer went. I shouted: ‘A minute.’ Then, with the print out of the fixer and into the wash, I could open the door.

  He was in his thirties, I’d guess, a large and solid man with too much colour in his face and flashing a pessimistic smile that came out all twisted. He was wearing a dirty anorak and a tweed hat.

  ‘Mr Hine?’ he asked. ‘Anthony Hine?’

  I nodded. Customers did not usually need to confirm my Christian name.

  He flashed a leather-bound plastic card out of his inside pocket, and said: ‘Detective Sergeant Dolan.’ And flashed it back before I could get a good look at it.

  ‘Excuse me.’ I reached out and waited. He grinned, and produced it again. I checked the photograph. It could well have been him. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I hired the car, you know, not pinched it.’

  ‘I’m sure you did. Are you the grandson of Mrs Angelina Hine?’

  Tingles ran down my spine. My palms rested on the twelve inches of counter between us, but I couldn’t prevent my fingers from curling.

  ‘Yes,’ I said stiffly.

  ‘Then I’m sorry to have to tell you that your grandmother died last night.’

  His eyes didn’t leave mine, and he probably noticed they’d gone out of focus. I was thinking that Gran had possibly been dying when I bent over her, dying when Margaret allowed her to return to her last sleep. And we’d not known. Could we have done anything ... ?

  ‘Sir?’

  I cleared my throat. ‘I’m sorry. I saw her only yesterday.’

  ‘So I understand.’

  ‘You’ve come from there?’ My eyes focused. His head was tilted, the hat slid sideways, he poked it back. ‘It’s quite a distance—how did you trace me?’

  ‘An address book. And this place is in the Yellow Pages ... you weren’t at home, you see.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Your wife said you’d left her. In fact, walked out.’

  ‘That’s correct.’ Had she said I’d gone off with another woman?

  ‘You left with a painting, I understand.’

  So ... not with a woman, with a painting. ‘It’s mine. My father handed it on.’ He smiled encouragingly, so I continued couldn’t stop myself. ‘Which was why I went to see my grandmother.’

  ‘The painting?’

  ‘To check who’d painted it.’

  ‘That ... and the others?’ he prompted.

  My reception area is so small that there’s no room for chairs, just the twelve inches of counter and its button. I was backed up against my darkroom door, but our faces were still only a yard apart. There was no retreat. He smiled. It seemed to peel the skin from my bones. I couldn’t say: what others? He clearly knew.

  ‘We discussed the ones in the loft,’ I admitted. Admitted? It felt like an admission.

  ‘In what way?’ He waited, but it was all too complex for me to go into. ‘To what end?’ he suggested helpfully.

  ‘She said I could have them. A gift.’

  His eyes at last slid aside. Some of my best work graces the walls, twenty by sixteens. He eyed them with approval. ‘But, a photographer,’ he said, ‘especially an expert, wouldn’t give wall space to a bunch of mouldy old paintings.’

  ‘This one would.’

  ‘But you didn’t take them with you when you left.’

  ‘It would’ve seemed too ... well, eager.’

  ‘They’re not there now. In the loft. I looked.’

  ‘You were told to look?’ I guessed.

  ‘Certainly. By the companion. Grace Fielding. She saw you leaving, the second time. Late. After ten. Did you realize she saw you leaving?’

  I shrugged. ‘I thought so at the time. Does it matter? I mean, they were mine. I went back and collected them. I didn’t fracture any laws.’

  ‘Breaking and entering. Burglary.’

  ‘I didn’t break anything, and surely I could enter my own grandmother’s house.’

  He pursed his lips. ‘Try theft,’ he suggested.

  ‘But they’re mine.’

  He lifted both palms, smiled, and said: ‘And there we have it. Are they yours? That is exactly the point.’

  It had been hot in the darkroom, but was cool out there, and I was down to my shirtsleeves. Nevertheless, the shirt was sticking to my back, and he was watching with interest the drop of sweat trickling down my nose. I’d been trying to keep Margaret out of it, but now I needed her, and had to mention her.

  ‘They are mine. She said she wanted me to have them. I’ve got a witness.’

  It seemed not to impress him. ‘Miss Fielding told me you went there with a woman. I don’t think there can be any dispute that your grandmother wanted you to have them. But she’s dead. The legal processes take over. There’s a will. Grace Fielding tells me that she gets all of which your grandmother died possessed. That’s the phrase. In this case, she died possessed of the house, and everything in it at the time of her death. In the house, Mr Hine. Do you see what I’m getting at? If she died before you took those paintings out of the front door, then what you were doing was theft. You were stealing from Grace Fielding.’

  I was taking slow, deep breaths. For him, the speech had been long, and I’d had a chance to recover my wi
ts.

  ‘She was alive when we left.’

  ‘You’re certain of that?’

  ‘We looked in on her twice—three times, but I didn’t go near the bed the last time. She was breathing very shallowly, but she was alive.’

  ‘Hmm!’ he said. ‘Yet Miss Fielding arrived just after you’d left, that second time, went straight up to Mrs Hine, and found she was dead. Now don’t say she couldn’t tell. She’s experienced. She can take a pulse. Your grandmother was dead.’

  ‘I see.’

  I saw very clearly. There had been only minutes in it. Grace could make a legal fight of it. She surely would, if she believed the loft paintings were by Frederick Ashe, who was becoming collectable. Grace, in fact, might well have spent some time, that afternoon, persuading Angelina to retract the gift. She would certainly have been furious when she spotted the Volvo leaving, and then discovered, as she must have done, that the loft had been emptied of paintings.

  ‘I see,’ I repeated. ‘So you’ve come here to charge me with theft?’

  ‘Oh no. No, no,’ he said emphatically. ‘It’s not as simple as that. I’ve spent a long while with Miss Fielding. She told me that after you left, the first time, she guessed what you’d come for, so she spoke to your grandmother about it. In the end, your grandmother agreed to write to you, and tell you she’d changed her mind about giving you the paintings. Miss Fielding was upset about the number of valuable items that’d been given away already. Are you following this, Mr Hine?’

  So Grace had listened at the door. ‘Closely,’ I assured him.

  ‘The old lady, you see, might well have been breathing shallowly, as you said. It wouldn’t have taken any great effort to prevent her from breathing at all. A hand over her mouth and nose, that’s all it’d take. There would probably be no struggle. What I’m trying to say to you is that the ME has said there’re signs that she was suffocated. The post-mortem will clarify it. We thought you ought to know. For now, we’re treating it as a murder enquiry.’

  He was saying this in the same unemotional and casual way he’d been using before. Perhaps, to him, the death of a woman of ninety-five was a very minor occurrence; she’d been so close to it. But to me it was the opposite. She had had so little left. Every passing day made the trespassing minutes more precious. And she’d been robbed of the diminishing time left to her.